MYTH OF SISYPHUS
189
him from his happiness, removed him by force to hell and the rock
prepared for
him.
It is already obvious that Sisyphus is the absurd hero. He is as
much so through his passions as through his torment. His scorn of
the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life earned for him
the unspeakable punishment of his whole being being employed to
achieve nothing.
It
is the price one must pay for the passions of this
earth. We are told nothing about Sisyphus in hell. Myths are made
in order that the imagination may give life to them. For this myth
one need envisage only the entire effort of a body tensed to raise
the enormous stone, to roll it and to make it climb a slope, an effort
begun again a hundred times; one need only see the contracted face,
the cheek pressed against the stone, the support of the shoulder which
holds the clay-covered mass and the leg which wedges it, the resistance
of the shoulders, the certainty wholly human of two hands full of
earth. At the end of this long effort measured by a space without a
sky and a time without depth, the goal
is
achieved. Sisyphus then
gazes upon the stone falling back in a few seconds to the lower world
from which he must bring it back to the summit. Again he descends
to the plain.
It is during this return, this pause, that Sisyphus interests me.
A face which toils so near to stone is already stone itself. I see this man
descend again with heavy but even step towards the torment the
conclusion of which he will not know. This hour which is like a
breath and which returns as surely as his misfortune, this is the hour
of consciousness! At each of these moments, when he departs from
the height and sinks little by little to the dens of the gods, he is
superior to his destiny. He is stronger than his rock.
If
this myth is tragic, it is because its hero is conscious. What,
in fact, would be his suffering
if
at each step the hope of success
sustained him? The worker of today labors every day of his life at
the same tasks and his destiny is no less absurd. But he is tragic only
at the rare moments when he becomes conscious. Sisyphus, proletarian
of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the entire extent of his
clairvoyance which constitutes his torment contains at the same time
his victory. There is no destiny which cannot be surmounted by scorn:
If
the descent is made thus in sorrow on certain days, it can also
be made in joy. The word, joy, is not excessive. I imagine once more
how Sisyphus returned to his rock when his sorrow began. When
the images of the earth have too strong a hold on the memory, when
